If Suggs needs surgery, he only has so long to do it
Posted by Mike Florio on December 5, 2012, 4:25 PM EST

Peeling back the “blood diamond” rhetoric and the reality that the Ravens need linebacker Terrell Suggs (and maybe two or three more of him) in order to win the Super Bowl, Suggs potentially faces a delicate decision that could impact the balance of his football career.

A source with knowledge of the situation explains that, if Suggs needs surgery to repair his torn biceps muscle, there’s a window within which the surgery must be performed or it can never be performed.

If it’s not performed within said window, the muscle would never return to 100 percent.

For players who are close to the end of their careers, it makes sense to not operate. For players who have a long way to go, surgery ends up being the best option.

In Suggs’ case, surgery would shut him down for the season. So the uncertainty regarding his current status comes less from the question of whether he can play this weekend than whether he needs to have surgery by a certain date that would shut him down for the rest of the year.